LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 






0000aa4555b 






2»V ,«/ ^ v31P> A ** *« -W' «/ \ 






V^-y .. v-^v* -* i 



& • l • * ♦ ^ <v ^ • ■ • * 






s V * 4? ^> • ©US ♦ AT ^ o^OILW* 4? ^ 












°^ **• " *' a \. **rjv»' .# *o. *^*; ••* 






•^1>. 



Compiled from the Original Manuscript of Col. P. Donan. 




TU 



F 



J tf 



ART OF THE CONTINEN 



rn • 



AN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE TREATISE 

FOR BUSINESS MEN, HOME SEEKERS AND 

TOURISTS, OF THE ADVANTAGES, 

RESOURCES AND SCENERY 

OJ THE 

GREAT WEST. 






/ fit Ittb 




tf 



vrV 



PUBLISHED BY THE PASSENGER DEPARTMENT 

CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY RAILROAD. 



No. 1 Bag 



1U 



D 

CHICAGO, ILL. 

1882. 










Copyright by 
PERCEVAL LOWELL. 

1882. 



Tp Hn\l OF TpE CoWTlflEMT. 



I. 

The Immensity and Grandeur of the 
American Great West. 



"I never felt as if I was out of doors before," exclaimed 
a New England man, as lie stepped off the cars, for the first time, 
west of the Mississippi; and it was a natural expression of 
amazement and admiration at the new sensations of vastness and 
grandeur that had come over him. To one from the petty king- 
doms and duchies of the Old World, many of them scarcely 
larger than a Nebraska or Colorado county, it is impossible to 
convey any idea of the boundless immensity of our American 
Great West. • 

To one from the small and over-crowded regions of the New 
England and other Eastern States, a trip through the vast, vigor- 
ous, growing empire of the West and Southwest is full of interest 
and instruction. It is a whirling panorama of perpetual con- 
trasts and surprises — a lightning express train of magnificent 
scenes and ever-novel facts and ideas. He finds that all he has 
heretofore heard or read has failed to convey even a faint concep- 
tion of its extent and resources, and that in order to properly 
comprehend its greatness he must begin anew and learn from 
observation. He has regarded the northern shores of Ohio and 
Illinois, or the remoter confines of Iowa and Nebraska as the 
Ultima Thules of the American Eepublic. What is his amaze- 
ment to discover that his diminutive province is but a speck on 
the mighty map of America, and that nortn and west of Illinois, 



4 The Heart of the Continent. 

Iowa and Nebraska stretches thousands of miles away a realm 
equally as vast as all that lies east and south of them to the 
Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. 

After voyaging up the majestic Mississippi, nearly fifteen hun- 
dred miles from the delta where Eads has planted his jetties, 




View of Michigan Avenue, Chicago. 



he reaches Keokuk or Burlington in what, scarce a generation 
ago, was an unknown land, and thinks now he has certainly 
reached the utmost verge of civilization. But he soon learns that 



The Heart of the Continent. 5 

lie has only entered the gateway to the great imperial western 
domain that still rolls away in an unending glorious vista of prairie 
and woodland, mountain, lake and magnificent river, city, village, 
mines, field and meadow, that reach to the golden shores of the 
Pacific. 

He rambles on for hundreds of miles, north or west or south, 
and at every halting-point thinks he is at the jumping-off place of 
creation. It takes four figures to measure the miles that lie 
between him and any spot he has ever known before, and he is 
convinced that there cannot be any more country beyond. But, 
at every turn, on every hand, he hears of illimitable regions yet 
ahead of him; of the marvelous fertility of the valleys of the 
Platte, the Republican, the Rio Grande and the Colorado; of 
horizon-fenced plains of grass and grain in Kansas, Nebraska 
and Wyoming, where a nation with all its flocks and herds may 
find sustenance; of mines yet to be opened up in Colorado, Mon- 
tana, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico and California, that shall 
surpass all the boasts of Ophir and of Ind, and make the colossal 
fortunes of all the Goulds and Vanderbilts of to-day seem trivial 
by comparison; of rich pastures and wheat lands stretching away 
on the south-west to the confines of "the land of the Montezu- 
mas;" of regions scarcely yet unexplored, but known to be as 
beautiful and productive, and as capable of supporting millions 
of industrious population, as the fairest gardens of Illinois, Iowa 
and Nebraska. 

At Omaha, the Shadowland of legend and romance of less 
than forty years ago, he hears of steamboats running regularly 
two thousand miles further up the Missouri and six hundred up 
the Yellowstone ; of navigating the Saskatchewan, Winnipeg and 
the Lake of the Woods, and other streams whose names he never 
heard before, flowing thousands of miles into Hudson's Bay, 
Puget Sound and the Arctic Ocean. He hears of harbors like 
those of Portland, Vancouver, San Francisco, San Diego and 
Guaymas, in which all the commerce of the world may safely ride 
at anchor. 

He sees long lines of railway whose iron tracks span the un- 
trod wilderness of half a generation ago. He sees single wheat- 
fields, amid what were laid down in the geographies of but a 



6 The Heart of the Continent. 

decade ago as alkali deserts, broader than Old- World principalities, 
waving with golden harvests whose luxuriance has amazed all 
Christendom. He hears the thunder of the greatest gold and 
silver mills in the world resounding in the yet warm lair of the 
Rocky Mountain grizzly bear. He sees cities like Omaha, Den- 
ver and Leadville sprung, as if by magic, from the silence and 
nothingness of ten or twenty years ago, into all the rush, bustle, 
luxury and elegance of metropolitan life, with churches, the- 
atres, hotels, water-works, banks, daily papers, street-cars, elec- 
tric lights, telephones, and all the conveniences found in the 
oldest and most wealthy portions of this country and Europe. 
To him it is like discovering a new continent, and for the first 
time in his life he realizes how contracted have been his previous 
ideas regarding the extent, wealth, and grandeur of what is to 
him a new world in the mighty West. 

He finds a country whose resources are as boundless as its limits, 
and that there is nothing that the eye, heart or imagination__can 
desire, that it does not offer or cannot show. 

Here are homes for nations yet unborn, where all riches of soil 
and mineral, all charms of climate and the beauties of scene unite 
to frame earth's grandest garden- spot. Here may he dwell on 
lake or mountain side, in fertile valley or the beautiful plain, in 
a land of meadows and fruit-trees, of vineyards and golden 
grain; under the feet a carpet of flowers, and the bluest of heavens 
bending above and resting its arch on the walls of the forest. 
The West unrolls before him millions on millions of acres which 
are to be had for little more than the mere asking or taking. 

Does he seek for gold and silver? The greatest mines of earth 
are yet to be opened in the American Great West. Mountains of 
golden and silver ore, beside which all the famed riches of the 
Comstock lode will some day sink to beggars' pence, yet rear their 
proud heads to heaven, untouched by pick or spade. The veri- 
table treasure-houses of the gods yet await the enterprise and 
muscle of the sturdy miners, who are destined ere long to fire the 
avarice and the envy of the world with their Midas-surpassing 
wealth of solid ducats. The surface dirt of Colorado, Arizona, 
New Mexico, California, Montana and Idaho mines is hardly 
broken: the glittering hoards are scarcely touched; the great 



The Heart of the Continent. 




Scene at Eiverside, suburban town on the 
Burlington Koute. 



bonanza fortunes are yet 
to be made. 

If he is a lover of the 
sublime and beautiful in 
natural scenery, the 
weird wonders of the 



8 The Heart of the Continent. 

Yellowstone Park and the Garden of the Gods, the mighty- 
canons of the Yosemite and the Colorado, the majestic peaks 
of the Rocky Mountains, afford an ever-changing and always 
glorious feast. It is a realm of mountains and waterfalls, 
of cloud- wreathed crags, awful chasms, boundless plains, gigantic 
floods and yawning caverns ; a transcendent panorama of all 
that is sublime and most gorgeous in rugged nature's handiwork ; 
a vast scene from enchanted land, eclipsing all the wonders of 
oriental fable, hushing the proudest landscape boasts of all the 
rest of creation, and defying all human genius, with pen or brush 
or pencil, to depict its grandeur and its loveliness. The sun in 
heaven, in his grand round, never looked down upon a more 
glorious realm. 

The Colorado tourist as he wanders among its magnificent 
scenery, can well appreciate the feelings of a well-known and 
popular poet, who on passing through the Gateway to the Garden 
of the Gods for the first time, exclaimed as its wonders and 
beauties burst on his view: 

"Where could our Hearts with more reverence bow, 
What Temple more grand than encircles us now, 
Whose roof is the Heavens, whose floor is the sod, 
Whose walls are the mountains, whose builder is God?" 



II. 

Six Great States that Form the Heart 
of the Continent. 



In the heart and center of this magnificent domain, itself the 
heart of the continent, six of the grandest States of the Ameri- 
can Union unroll their beauty and riches to the admiring 
gaze of men. In the exact geographical center of the fairest 
half of the new world, stretching from the great lakes to the 
Rocky Mountains, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and 
Colorado form an empire grander in its resources and capabilities 
than any emperor or czar, prince or potentate of the older civili- 
zations ever swayed sceptre over. Alexander, when he had con- 
quered the ancient world, ruled no such royal realm. The Csesars, 
when Rome's resistless eagles spread their golden wings triumph- 
ant from the burning sands of Africa to the mist-clad hills of 
Caledonia, drew tribute and homage from no such empire. 
The ambition of Napoleon might have been content with such a 
domain. Over a thousand miles in length from east to west, and 
from three to six hundred miles in width from north to south; its 
eastern shores washed by the blue waves of Lake Michigan, and 
its western slopes reposing in the shadows of the gold-ribbed 
giants of the mighty Sierras; traversed for hundreds of miles by 
America's two greatest rivers, the Mississippi and Missouri, it em- 
braces every variety of soil, and is capable of yielding in exhaust- 
less profusion all the products of the temperate zone. It 
abounds in wild and romantic scenes, great rivers, boundless 
prairies and forests, picturesque mountains, incalculable mineral 
wealth, and pasture-lands on which the cattle of a nation may 
feed to the full. A brief glance at the six States composing this 
glorious continental heart and center will not be unprofitable. 



10 



The Heart of the Continent. 
ILLINOIS. 



Among the great States of the West, Illinois stands first. The ' 
name is derived from the Indian word, Mini, signifying ' ' Superior 
Men," and the early French gave it a termination to suit their 
tongue. The five tribes constituting the Illinois confedera- 
tion were the Peorias, Cahokas, Tamaroras, Kaskaskias and 







Bridge across Bureau Creek, 111., on the line of 
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. K. 



Michigam- 
ies. They 
were f i - 
nally con- 
quered and 
driven out by more powerful 
northern tribes; and at the 
end of a century from the 
period that saw them masters 
of the entire country bordered 
on the north by Lake Michi- 
gan, south by the Ohio, east 
by the Wabash, and west by 
the Mississippi, not a vestige of 



The Heart of the Continent. 11 

their former greatness remained, and the few surviving members 
of the once proud and powerful Illinois confederation had been ab- 
sorbed by other tribes from whom they sought protection from their 
relentless northern foes. The first white settlements were made by 
the French. Nicholas Perrot in 1671 was probably the first white 
man who ever visited the region, followed by Joliet and Mar- 
quette in 1673. In 1679, La Salle descended the Illinois river, and 
built a small fort, which he named Crevecceur, at the foot of 
Peoria lake. In 1682, he made a second trip from Canada, bring- 
ing a considerable colony with him, and establishing settlements 
at Kaskaskia, Cahokia and other places. In 1778 the government 
of Virginia sent Lieutenant-Colonel George Rogers Clark, than 
whom a braver or better officer never unfurled the American flag, 
to conquer the British garrisons in the West, and in July of that 
year Kaskaskia, then the capital of Illinois, was captured, and 
shortly after the fort at Crevecceur, near Peoria, and the British 
then evacuated the Territory. In the succeeding month of Octo- 
ber, Virginia erected the whole conquered country, embracing all 
the territory west of the Ohio river, into the County of Illinois. 
In 1784 Virginia ceded all this territory to the United States. In 
February, 1790, St. Clair County (the first county in the State) 
was organized, with Kaskaskia as the county seat. On May 7th, 
1800, the Territory of Indiana was carved out of the Territory of 
the Northwest, and embraced the present States of Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. On the third of February, 
1809, the Territory of Illinois was detached from the Territory of 
Indiana, and constituted a separate Territory, having then a 
population estimated at 9,000. Kaskaskia was the first seat of 
government. The 3d of December, 1818, Illinois was admitted 
as a State of the Union, with a population of 45,000. By the 
census of 1820 it had 55,211; in 1850, 851,470; in 1870, 2,539,891; 
and 3,077,771 in 1880. Since then its growth has kept pace with 
any previous period. 

The State is three hundred and eighty miles long, with an 
average width of a hundred and fifty-six miles, and an area of 
55,414 square miles, or 35,465,093 acres, ninety per cent, of which 
is tillable land. It is mostly a high table land, of prairie and 
timber beautifully intermingled, with an elevation of from four 



12 The Heart of the Continent. 

to eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. Its soil is inex- 
haustibly fertile, and nowhere on earth do the labors of the 
husbandman yield richer returns. Illinois farmers are universally 
thrifty and independent. A large part of the State is like a vast 
garden; neat houses, fine barns, blooming orchards, tasteful 
hedges, broad fields of golden grain, meadows and vineyards, 
and green pastures dotted with flocks and herds of thoroughbred 
cattle, sheep, horses and other stock, forming a continuous pano- 
rama of agricultural beauty and prosperity. Half its hundred 
and two county-seats are cities of commercial and financial im- 
portance, Chicago, its commercial metropolis, being the fourth 
city in the Union in population, the. second in commerce, and the 
first in enterprise and promise. Every branch of manufacturing 
is carried on in the State, and stock-raising is an extensive and 
profitable industry. In the production of wheat, corn and oats, 
Illinois is the first State in the Union; in live stock, second; in 
rye, third; in value of manufactures and amount of capital em- 
ployed, sixth; of distilled liquors, dressed lumber and packed 
provisions, first. The coal fields of Illinois cover an area of 
45,000 square miles. The coal is bituminous, well adapted for 
steam and domestic purposes, and is extensively used by iron 
manufacturers. The production in 1880 was 4,000,000 tons, 
and was only exceeded in the extent of its output by Pennsylvania 
and Ohio. 

The following shows the leading articles of farm products and 
live stock produced by Illinois in 1880, as shown by the assessors' 
returns: 



Wheat, bushels 60,958,757 

Corn, bushels 252,697,896 

Oats, bushels 62,946,510 

Rye, bushels 3,049,860 

Barley, bushels 1,109,245 

Flax Seed, bushels 1,557,898 

Timothy Seed, bushels. . . .400,124 

Clover Seed, bushels 87,144 

Other Grass Seeds, bushels, 66,789 

Tobacco, lbs 2,736,406 

Broom Corn, lbs 14,457,156 

Hay, tons marketed 3,486,584 



Irish Potatoes, bushels ..6,470,811 
Pounds of Butter sold. .24,553,449 
Pounds of Cheese sold. . .6,187,680 

Cows kept, number 613,738 

Cattle, total No. in State. 1,999,788 
Cattle, No. marketed ... .2,473,727 
Hogs, total No. in State. . 3,133,557 

Hogs, No. marketed 2,642,606 

Sheep, total No. in State . .964,696 

Sheep, No. marketed 193,384 

Horses, number 912,586 

Mules and Asses, number. .116,260 



The Heart of the Continent. 13 

Its railroad system is the finest in the Union ; its whole 
surface being checkered with the iron pathways of trade and 
travel. The State has within its limits 1,300 miles of navigable 
river, Lake Michigan washes its northern frontier, and the 
Illinois and Michigan canal connects the great lakes with the 
Illinois and Mississippi rivers, affording every facility of trans- 




jjp portation. 
The as- 
sessed val- 
uation of the 
State in 1880 
was $799,813,566. 
Religious and ed- 
ucational institutions 

View in Springdale, Peoria, 111. abound everywhere 

and are well supported. The State has lavishly provided for all 
its unfortunates. There are three insane asylums, one deaf and 
dumb asylum, one asylum for the blind, one for the education of 
feeble-minded children, one charitable eye and ear infirmary, 
and an admirably managed home for soldiers' orphans. Some 
of these institutions are on a magnificent scale. The peni- 
tentiary is at Joliet, and a branch at Chester. In addition to the 



14 The Heart of the Continent. 

State normal university at Normal, and its southern branch at 
Carbondale, there are the Illinois industrial university at Urbana, 
and the Illinois agricultural school at Irvington, besides some 
thirty colleges, forty academies, law and medical schools, theo- 
logical seminaries, and six hundred or more high grade private 
schools and seminaries. The State, under the new apportionment, 
has twenty representatives in Congress, and at its present rate of 
growth bids fair to be, ere long, second only to New York, if 
not even to her. 

IOWA. 

Just west of the northern portion of Illinois and the southern 
part of Wisconsin lies the second great State of the six that form 
the heart of the continent. Iowa, as its name in the Indian 
tongue denotes, is a "Beautiful Land." On all the globe there is 
none, as an agricultural region, a home-land, more beautiful or 
more bountiful. It is three hundred miles long from east to west 
and two hundred wide from north to south, and contains an area 
of 55,045 square miles or 35,288,800 acres, almost exactly the 
same as Illinois. Its shores are washed for three hundred and sixty- 
five miles on the east by the Mississippi river, and for three hun- 
dred and sixty-four miles on the west by the Missouri, making a 
total of seven hundred and twenty-nine miles of frontage on the 
two greatest rivers of North America. Thousands of small 
streams traverse every portion of the State, furnishing drainage 
and abundant water-supply, and in the northern counties there 
are hundreds of crystal lakes swarming with delicious fish. The 
whole surface of the State is beautifully undulating prairie, inter- 
spersed along all the streams with groves of oak, elm, walnut, 
ash, hickory, maple, linn and cottonwood. Living springs burst 
from the hillsides everywhere. The climate is delightful, health- 
ful and invigorating, ranking according to the census statistics 
among the first in salubrity. There are few swamps or stag- 
nate sloughs, no miasma or malaria, and nothing conducive to 
disease. Pulmonary complaints are scarcely known. The soil 
of Iowa has become famous throughout the world for its fertility. 
Ninety-five hundredths of the entire surface of the State is tillable 
land, and it is not surpassed in productiveness by that of any 



The Heart of the Continent. 15 

other region, in the United States. Reliable statisticians declare 
that the wonderful soil of this State alone is capable of a cultivation 
that would yield harvests amply sufficient to feed 40,000,000 peo- 
ple. Corn is a specially profitable crop, yielding from thirty to 
seventy-five bushels to the acre. Wheat and oats do well in 
all parts of the State. Flax is also raised with great success 
All root crops yield well. "Wild and tame grasses and clover 
grow luxuriantly everywhere. Stock-raising is rapidly becoming 
a grea^ an( ^ profitable industry. Abundance of nutritious grass, 
plenty of pure water, ample timber for shade, and the fullest 
facilities of rail and water transportation to reach the markets, 
ensure success to any stock-grower of ordinary intelligence and 
energy. Iowa, though one of the youngest States in the Union, 
already ranks first as a producer of hogs, and second in corn. 
Fruit-growing is successfully and extensively prosecuted. Iowa 
has for years taken the first premiums at the national horticultural 
exhibitions for the finest apples, and the greatest number and 
varieties. The coal-fields of Iowa cover an area of over 20,000 
square miles, and mining is successfully carried on in some thirty- 
five different counties. The coal is bituminous, and of fair 
quality. Large amounts of capital are being invested, and large 
numbers of workmen employed, in coal-mining, and the industry 
is rapidly growing. This, with abundant and constantly increas- 
ing facilities of railroad transportation, added to the supply of 
wood from the groves and forests that dot all the State, ensures 
ample and cheap fuel for all private and public uses. Gypsum of 
the finest quality exists in exhaustless deposits. Limestone, suita- 
ble for making first-class quicklime, is plenty in most parts of the 
State, and excellent building stone is quarried in a majority of the 
ninety-nine counties into which the State is sub-divided. Lead has, 
for years, been extensively mined, while potters' clay, fire clay and 
clay suitable for brick-making abound, and valuable deposits of 
mineral paint have lately been discovered in several places. Peat 
has been found in some of the northern counties, but has not been 
much used. The great national highway across the continent lies 
directly through Southern Iowa, and her railroad system is a vast 
and swiftly growing one. In 1860, twenty States had more lines 
of railway ; now there are but four. This progress in railroad con- 



1C 



The Heart of the Continent. 



struction shows the confidence of capitalists in the future of the 
State. Every part of the State is traversed by the iron tracks of 
progress, and the work of building additional lines goes cease- 
lessly on. Churches, schools and all the varieties of educational, 




religious, correctional and 
charitable institutions 
abound, among the long 
list being the State univer- 
sity, at Iowa City, the 
original capital; State ag- 
ricultural college and model st - Louis > Missouri - 
farm, at Ames; training school for teachers, at Cedar. Falls; in- 
stitution for the support of the deaf and dumb, at Council Bluffs; 
college for the blind, at Vinton; home for soldiers' orphans and 



The Heart of the Continent. 17 

home for indigent children, at Davenport; asylum for feeble- 
minded children, at Glenwood; State reform school for boys, at 
Eldora; State reform school for girls, at Mitchell ville; hospitals for 
the insane, at Mount Pleasant and Independence; State peniten- 
tiary, at Fort Madison, and- additional penitentiary at Anamosa. 
The educational system of the State ranks among the best in 
the Union. There are over 12,000 school-houses, and the 
annual expenditure for public school purposes is upwards of 
$5,000,000, a portion of which is derived from the school 
lands. Besides this there are many denominational colleges 
and high grade schools, and the official statistics of the 
United States census show fewer illiterate people in proportion 
to population in Iowa than in any other State of the Union. 
Newspapers abound and are well supported everywhere. When 
Iowa was admitted into the Union in 1846, its population was but 
little over 100,000. The census of 1850 gave it a population of 
192,214; that of 1860 showed 674,913, an increase during the 
decade of more than three hundred per cent.; that of 1870 footed 
up 1,194,020, a growth during the ten years of nearly a hun- 
dred per cent. ; and the last census, that of 1880, showed a popu- 
lation of 1,624,620, which has before this time swelled to over 
1,800,000. Since 1860, the percentage of increase has been four 
times that of the United States at large. Nine States, that out- 
ranked Iowa in population in 1870, now stand below it. Of the 
35,228,800 acres of land in Iowa, scarcely one-half has yet been 
brought into even nominal cultivation, and the unimproved lands 
are equal in fertility to any in the State. The railroad companies 
are offering their lands for sale at from three to fifteen dollars an 
acre, and large tracts held by private parties in nearly every 
county are being placed in market at low prices. In some parts 
of the State excellent lands can be obtained at from four to ten 
dollars. With such lands to be had almost for the asking, in a State 
that has no debt and where taxation is scarcely more than nomi- 
nal, where the soil and climate are unsurpassed, with water and 
fuel in abundance, limitless facilities of transportation to the 
markets of the world, among an intelligent and hospitable popu- 
lation, blessed with all possible educational advantages, what re- 
gion on earth can offer more inducements to the seeker for a 



18 The Heart of the Continent. 

home? And, with inexhaustible supplies of raw material, coal 
for fuel, stone and wood for building, and water-power for run- 
ning machinery, what State in all the Union presents more oppor- 
tunities to the manufacturer and enterprising capitalist, than Iowa? 

The dairy interest of Iowa is developing with wonderful 
rapidity. Colonel Littler, secretary of the National Dairymen's 
Association, says that ten years ago there was not a regular cream- 
ery in the State ; now there are 500, with an annual product of 
85,000,000 lbs. of butter, 50 per cent, of which is shipped out of 
the State, netting a profit of $10,000,000, to which he says may 
be added over $2,000,000 for cheese, after supplying the home 
demand. Iowa butter took the first premium at the Centennial 
Exhibition in 1876, and its general rank is equal to the best pro- 
duced in the United States. A single sale to an English buyer last 
year amounted to $40,000. The shipment went direct to London. 

As an evidence that the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad 
traverses the most productive portions of this enormously prolific 
State, a compilation has been made from the report of the Iowa 
railroad commissioners showing the total production of the leading 
articles, and the channels through which the surplus was shipped 
east from the State in 1880*. 

Amount Moved by Total moved 

Produced. C B. & Q. K. R. by all other lines. 

Corn, bu 230,633,200 26,199,018 51,908,751 

Wheat, bu 36,099,769 5,333,423 9,305,519 

Oats, bu 41,288,800 4,555,285 12,170,187 

Rye, bu 574,000 383,018 757,516 

Barley, bu 4,600,000 783,755 1,770,710 

Potatoes, bu 10,165,000 1,764,000 1,959,000 

Cattle, No 2,612,006 210,630 410,139 

Hogs, No 2,778,400 989,499 2,241,841 

Sheep, No 463,488 21,838 47,274 

MISSOURI. 

Almost in the exact geographical center of the United States, 
an empire in proportions, a paradise in beauty, and a treasure- 
house of the genii and fairies in natural resources, lies the great 
State of Missouri. Two hundred and eighty-two miles in length 
from north to south, and three hundred and forty-eight miles in 
breadth from east to west, the State has an area of 65,350 square 



The Heart of the Continent. 



19 




View at Burlington, Iowa, from Third Street Hill. 



20 The Heart of the Continent. 

miles, or 41,824,000 acres. It is eight times as large as Massachu- 
setts, and ranks as the eighth in the Union in size. Lying as it 
does on the exact line where the happy medium is found in 
climate, it escapes the rigors of the far northern winters and 
the torrid heats of far southern summers, while its vast ex- 
tent and diversified surface afford every variety of temperate 
climate. Its soil is capable of producing almost every grain, 
grass, fruit, and timber of the temperate zones. It raised in 
1880, 160,000,000 bushels of corn, 29,563,000 bushels of wheat', 
300,000 bushels of flax-seed, 20,000,000 pounds of tobacco. While 
the portion of the State north of the Missouri river is second to none 
for the production of grain and grasses, that laying south is especially 
adapted to fruit. Grapes are extensively cultivated iof table 
purposes and wine making, and there are few wines that rank 
superior to those made from Missouri grapes. Although this in- 
dustry is still in its infancy, those who are most competent to 
judge, express the opinion that ere the end of the present century 
the vineyards of Missouri will alone give employment to tens of 
thousands of people, and the production of wines become one of 
its leading industries. Cotton is also largely grown in the southern 
counties. Vast forests of valuable cypress, oak, elm, poplar, 
hickory, ash, walnut, maple, cedar and pine are found in the 
southern portion. The mineral wealth of the State is unsurpassed 
perhaps by that of any region of similar area on the globe. The 
great Iron Mountain has long been one of the wonders of the world 
to tourists and scientists. The lead mines of Missouri are among 
the richest in the world. There are 26,000 square miles of coal 
lands in the State, and the supply is ample to meet all the de- 
mands of the State for generations to come. Copper, zinc, cobalt, 
manganese, nickel, gypsum, baryta, kaolin, marble, onyx and 
granite, are found in many portions of the State, but chiefly in the 
southern part. 

The Mississippi river washes the eastern border of the State for 
450 miles; and the Missouri, after forming its western bound- 
ary for two hundred and fifty miles, turns to the east and flows 
almost through the centre of the State four hundred miles to its 
junction with the Mississippi. The Osage, Gasconade and La- 
mine rivers are all navigable, and thousands of smaller streams 



The Heart of the Continent. 21 

furnish every part of the State with a never-failing supply of pure 
water. All these streams abound with delicious fish. All over 
the State springs of water clear as crystal gush from the hillsides. 
One of these, called Bryce's spring, on the Niangua, in southwestern 
Missouri, is said to discharge 10,000,000 cubic feet of water a day, 
and in many instances mills are run by water-power furnished by 
these remarkable fountains. In the vast comparatively unsettled 
regions of the State game is abundant. Missouri is divided into 
a hundred and fifteen counties, and has a population of 2,169,000. 
It contains over 1,500 cities and villages, 150,000 cultivated farms, 
17,000 manufacturing establishments, 4,000 miles of railroad, 1,600 
post-offices, over 10,000 public schools and 2,000 private schools, 
two hundred collegiate institutions, and has an "educational fund 
of nearly $7,500,000. It employs $125,000,000 of manufacturing 
capital, paying out yearly for wages and material $210,000,000, 
and producing $275,000,000 in manufactured goods. The timber, 
coalpiron, lead, copper and zinc, the cotton, flax and wool, 
and the magnificent water-power to be found almost every- 
where, hold out unsurpassed inducements to enterprising capitalists 
and manufacturers. The vast areas of rich lands, as yet unbroken 
by plow or harrow and for sale at low prices ; the infinite variety of 
productions, the delightful climate, the healthfulness, the exhaust- 
less supplies of timber, coal and building stone, the abundance of 
pure spring water and the ample educational advantages of Mis- 
souri, particularly the north-western portion, unite to render it a 
veritable Canaan, a land of promise and rich fulfilment, to the 
seeker for a home. 

KANSAS. 

No State has cut a more important figure in the history of the 
Union than Kansas, and few, if any, have made greater advance- 
ment in population, and all that tends to material wealth. The 
cause of its almost unparalleled prosperity is due to its delightful 
climate and fertile soil. The settler had but' to select his home, sow 
and reap. So easily was the soil brought under cultivation, that 
tens of thousands of acres that were clothed with rich and beau- 
tiful autumnal flora in September, waved with golden grain the 
following July. Being in the great pathway across the continent, 
the railroads did not wait for the settler, but preceded him, hence 



22 



The Heart of the Continent. 



the latter was provided with ready means for transportation ere 

he had such patronage to bestow. 

The act organizing the territory was passed May 30, 1854, and 

Kansas was admitted as a State January 29, 1301. In 1860 the 

population was 107,206; in 1870 it was 364,339; in 1880, 995,966, 

and is now estimated at 1,250,000, 
Kansas has an area of 81,318 square miles, or 52,043,520 acres, 

of land as 
beautiful and 
fertile as ever 
a crow flew 
over. In 1866 
Kansas was 
the twenty- 
fourth State 
in the Union 
in agricul- 
tural pro- 
ducts ; in 
1878, just 
twelve years 
later, it sur- 
passed every 
other State 
but four in 
its wheat 

View of Keokuk, Iowa. Vield and 

stood fourth in corn. Its corn crop in 1868 was 24,500,000 
bushels; and in 1879 it had risen to 105,729,927 bushels, an in- 
crease of four hundred and fifty per cent, in eleven years. Such 
rapidity of development has never been paralleled in the history 
of the world, except perhaps in Nebraska alone. 

Of the 52,043,520 acres of land within the limits of Kansas, 
scarcely 11,000,000 are as yet in cultivation. Vast tracts of as 
beautiful land as human eye ever beheld, still lie awaiting the 
coming of the sturdy husbandman and herdsman. The western 
part of the State, on the headwaters of the Kansas and Arkansas 
rivers, is one vast open pasture of thousands of square miles, 




The Heart of the Continent. 



23 



where millions of cattle and sheep can be grazed the whole year 
round. The grass grows from one to six feet in height all over 
these mighty pampas, where scarcely more than ten years ago 
countless herds of buffalo found rich subsistence, summer and 




Grave of the celebrated Indian Chief Black Hawk, near Keokuk, Iowa. 

winter. With a few hundred dollars invested in sheep or cattle, 
any young man of energy and ordinary industry and judgment 
can make himself independent in this region in a few years. In 
addition to the magnificent grain and grass crops, fruit and melons 



24 The Heart of the Continent. 

of all kinds do well, grapes reach the highest degree of perfection, 
and potatoes and other root crops and garden vegetables grow to 
an enormous size and yield immensely. All the world beheld with 
amazement the grain, grass, fruit and vegetable display made by 
Kansas at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, 
which excited wide-spread interest in the young giant State from 
which it came. The southeastern part of the State is underlaid by 
an almost unbroken coal-bed and mining is carried on extensively 
and profitably. Fine water-power is afforded by many of the 
streams. Salt springs abound in the vallej^s of the Republican, 
Solomon and Saline rivers, and at one place in the western part of 
the State there is a vast bed of crystallized salt vaiying from six 
inches to upward of two feet in thickness. Lead, alum, zinc, 
mineral paints, limestone suitable for hydraulic cement, and 
many varieties of excellent building stone are found in different 
portions of the State. Unimproved lands can be bought at low 
prices even in the most thickly settled portions of the State, and 
further west there are still homes for hundreds of thousands at 
government rates. The tide of immigration is pouring in from 
every part of the world. The most unquestionable evidence, of 
its rapid and substantial prosperity is shown by the fact that in 
1874 the total assessed value of live stock of all kinds and farm 
products was $39,374,153.80, and in 1881, $122,946,489.95, show- 
ing an increase of $83,572,336.15. The real value of property of 
all kinds per capita, in 1881, was $440.31. Increase in the land 
cultivated in 1881 over 1874 was 6,125,300 acres. Increase in 
cultivated land in 1882 over 1881, 1,192,163 acres. The following 
shows the yield of the principal farm products for the year 1881 : 
Wheat, 19,909,000 bu. ; corn, 80,760,000 bu.; oats, 8,754,000 bu.; 
rye, 467,000 bu. ; barley, 243,000 bu.; buckwheat, 58,621 bu.; flax- 
seed, 1,184,445 bu. ; broom corn, 32,961,150 lbs.; castor beans, 
393,549 bu. ; Irish potatoes, 1,854,140 bu. The corn crop this year 
is estimated at 175,100,000 bu., and the wheat at 36,000,000 bu. 

NEBRASKA. 

Youngest but one of all the States in the Union, it is claimed 
for Nebraska that it surpasses all the others in comparative ra- 
pidity of development, capacity of production and all the advan- 



The Heart of the Continent. 25 

tages and inducements that govern the choice of seekers for 
homes and fortunes in the west. In growth, Kansas alone of all 
the States has ever rivaled it. In 1855, its population was 4,494; 
and in 1880, it was 452,542, having multiplied over a hundred-fold 
in twenty -five years. In 1860, its population was 28,481, six times 
what it was five years before. In 1870, it had increased to 122,993, 
nearly five-fold in ten years; and in the ten years following, 
the increase was nearly four-fold. The population of the State 
is now estimated at fully 600,000. Four States claim to be the 
exact geographical center of the republic, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas 
and Nebraska, and the last is far f rom least. The State has an area 
of 76,000 square miles, or 48,640,000 acres, of which nearly every 
acre is valuable for tillage or pasture. With a population as dense 
as that of Ohio, seventy-five to the square mile, Nebraska would 
maintain 5,700,000 people. With two hundred and thirty to the 
square. mile, as in Massachusetts, Nebraska would be an empire 
of 17,480,000 souls. The taxable values of the State in 1870 
were $53,709,828, and in 1880 they were $90,431,757, an increase 
of nearly seventy per cent. The annual increase in the value of 
lands is from ten to twenty per cent. It is but a few years since 
the whistle of the first locomotive was heard within the borders 
of the State. Now it has nearly 3,0Q0 miles of railroad. The 
State is abundantly supplied with schools, colleges and all the 
varieties of charitable, educational and reformatory institutions. 
Its common school system is based upon a land grant of 2,443,148 
acres, which will yield a fund of over $18,000,000. The grain 
product of the State in 1874 was 10,000,000 bushels; in 1879, it 
was 100,000,000 bushels, a ten-fold increase in five years, or two 
hundred per cent, each year. In 1878, the State produced 295,000 
head of hogs, and in 1879, 700,000, an increase of nearly two 
hundred and fifty per cent, in a single year. It annually 
raises over 300,000 cattle and 250,000 sheep. The climate cannot 
be surpassed for healthfulness and all invigorating qualities. The 
pure and bracing air is the surest tonic for invalids suffering from 
malarial, catarrhal or bronchial troubles. The perfect clearness 
of the atmosphere is one of the things that strikes every stranger, 
enabling one to distinguish objects at double or treble the dis- 
tance that is possible in less favored regions. The whole State is 



26 



The Heart of the Continent. 



magnificently watered, and dotted with groves of timber. It is 
favorably situated between the fortieth and forty-third degrees of 
north latitude, where all climatic vigor and mildness meet, and in 
the very belt upon the surface of the globe which has "in all ages 




Rail Road Bridge across Skunk Eiver, near Rome, Iowa 

produced the highest type of men and women, the highest devel- 
opment, physical, intellectual and moral. The surface of the 
State is like a vast stretch of landscape gardening, gently undula- 
ting prairies interspersed with groves of timber and diversified by 



The Heart of the Continent. 27 

numberless streams of pure water. The soil is a rich black loam, 
being in many places from two to twenty feet in depth, underlaid 
by a stiff clay, and remarkable for its ability to produce good 
crops in the dryest season. From forty to eighty bushels of 
corn to the acre is not an unusual crop in the valleys, and from 
eighteen to twenty-five bushels of wheat may be relied upon as 
the yield under any favorable circumstances. Apples, pears, 
plums, cherries and all the fruits common in this latitude, yield 
abundantly and of the finest quality. Garden vegetables, pota- 
toes, onions, turnips and melons of all kinds give immense 
returns for slight cultivation. 

The purity of its atmosphere, and excellence of its tame and 
wild grasses, especially adapt the State, particularly the south- 
eastern portion, to dairy purposes, and although this branch of 
farm industry is in its infancy, it is rapidly developing. Accord- 
ing to the census returns of 1880 there were 161,787 milch cows 
in the State, and the number has largely increased since that 
period. 

The western part of the State is the stock-grower's paradise. 
On the vast plains that stretch from the Republican river 
to the Niobrara, across the valleys of the Platte, Middle and 
North Fork of the Loup, the Elkhorn and the Snake rivers, the 
cattle of a great nation might feed. The grass grows in rank luxu- 
riance, in many places along the streams that everywhere diversify 
the surface attaining a height so great that a man on horseback can 
scarcely see over it. Little care is necessary the year round, 
and the ratio of increase of a herd is almost beyond belief. 
Cattle and sheep enjoy entire immunity from the diseases which 
ravage the flocks and herds of nearly every other region, 
and the expense of rearing them is literally almost nothing. In 
the most beautiful and fertile portions of the State, the grand 
valleys of the Platte and Republican rivers, the Burlington & 
Missouri River Railroad Company, a part of the great Chicago, 
Burlington & Quincy Railroad system, has 500,000 acres of 
splendid lands for sale at from two to ten dollars an acre, on long 
credit and most favorable terms to buyers. In the western part 
of the State, where settlements are as yet comparatively few and 
far between, millions of acres still remain subject to entry as 



28 The Heart of the Continent. 

homesteads, pre-emptions or timber claims under the government 
land laws. Of all the magnificent group of States, that form the 
subject of this brief treatise, none possesses more advantages or 
offers more inducements to the seeker for a home and a fortune. 
A soil as fertile as the far-famed valley of the Nile, and a climate 
as healthful as ever was fanned by the pure airs of primeval 
paradise. Timber, water, limitless capacities of production. 
Boundless ranges for flocks and herds. In the language of Holy 
Writ, "A land of brooks and water, of fountains and depths that 
spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley; a land 
wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness ; thou shalt not 
lack anything in it." With all these riches of resources and charms, 
with as fine religious and educational advantages as any region of 
the world, with an intelligent, moral and enterprising population, 
and with 20,000,000 acres to be had for little more than a 
song, it is easy to understand the magnificent growth of the 
State. It is no wonder that untold thousands of strong-armed 
and clear-headed immigrants, the brain and brawn that build 
states and empires, are pouring in like a ceaseless, ever-swelling 
tide from every region of our own country and of the world. 
The next census will find Nebraska in population, wealth and all 
the elements of power far ahead of many States that enjoyed a 
half century of culture and development before the great Nebras- 
kan wilderness was broken by a white settlement. The whole 
State is dotted with universities, colleges, schools and churches. 
Its population is noted throughout the republic, as conspicuous, 
even among the brainy and pushing people of the American 
Great West, for intelligence, enterprise and untiring vigor of body 
and mind, honesty and a high degree of culture and refinement. 

COLORADO. 

Colorado is the youngest State in the Union, having been ad- 
mitted in 1876, on the nation's centennial anniversary. But 
although the youngest in years, it is a lusty youth, and in natural 
resources, delightfulness of climate, beauty and grandeur of 
scenery, it has no equal among the older members of the family 
that constitute the American Union of States. Its history renders 
lame the tales of the Arabian Nights, and makes all fables and 



The Heart of the Continent. 



29 



fairy stories seem commonplace and probable. All gorgeous 
legends and romances have found full realization here. The wild- 
est dreams of oriental poets and romancers, all the weird, resplen- 
dent creations of magi and genii, become waking facts amid these 
miracle-wrought crags and canons. All the sublimest glories of 
the Swiss and Italian Alps, all the picturesque savagery of the 
Tyrol, and all the softer beauties of Killarney and Como and 
Naples dwindle to insignificance by comparison with the stupend- 
ous scenes that meet the gaze at every turn in Colorado : vast 
peaks, whose crowns of everlasting snow and ice glitter in the 




View on line of C, B. & Q. E. K., near Ottumwa, Iowa. 



sunlight far above where storms and torrents roar; chasms so pro- 
found that their yawning depths seem glimpses of the bottomless 
caverns where plutonian shadows walk and Titans strive ; cataracts, 
whose crystal floods dissolve to snowy foam and spray long before 
they strike the rocky basins' dizzy distances below. It is a land of 
giant crags and fathomless abysses, carved by unending ages of 
whirlpools and eddies ; a land of cloud-wreathed heights and 
awful depths, of whirling waters, of rocks and tumbling streams 
and flying spray. Rainbows cast their glittering coronets around 
the mountains' lofty brows, and radiant irises dance in many a 
romantic gorge. Colorado is Fairyland, a region where elves and 



30 The Heart of the Continent. 

gnomes might sport and make their homes. Among all the regions 
of earth, it is pre-eminently the tourist's paradise, the holy land of 
sight-seers and lovers of Nature in her sublimest and loveliest 
moods. It is the great world's sanitarium. Amid these inspiring 
scenes the air is dry and pure as that which fanned the cheek of 
sinlessness in primal Eden. Catarrh, hay-fever and asthma vanish 
at once beneath its balmy influence. Even tubercular consumption 
finds relief and often cure. From the strange Deity -wrought 
laboratories of the mountain-sides all over the State, burst forth 
the magical fountains of healing for invalids of every class. Every 
variety of medicinal waters known to humanity is found some- 
where in this Wonderland. Hot springs that possess all the vir- 
tues of the Arkansas Springs are found in nearly a score of 
different places, and their waters are a sure relief for rheumatism, 
gout, dyspepsia, and almost every form of nervous, inflammatory 
and cutaneous disease. Sulphur springs of every known variety — 
white, red, yellow and black, hot and cold — are found in many 
different places, as well as soda, magnesia, and all the count- 
less species of chalybeate springs. The sick and enfeebled of 
every land may here find some specific, compounded by Jehovah's 
own all-wise hand, for their relief or cure, and thousands who first 
went to Colorado by prescription of physicians, scarcely hoping 
to find temporary alleviation of the tortures of disease, now live in 
vigorous rejuvenation to sound the praises of the grand region 
which is destined to be the greatest health resort of the world. 

Colorado has an area of 104, 500 square miles, nearly as large as all 
the New England States and New York combined. Its mountain- 
sides are covered with forests of valuable timber, and are swollen 
with their hidden wealth of gold and silver, iron, copper, lead and 
coal. All the valleys and foothills are covered with a luxuriant 
growth of nutritious grass, and the soil when properly irrigated 
yields rich returns for the husbandman's labor. Streams of 
water pure as ever flowed from the distilleries of the skies ripple 
and tumble through the canons, furnishing water-power enough 
to turn all the world's machinery The State contains at least 
5,000,000 acres of tillable land, of which little over 120,000 acres 
are in cultivation; and yet the yield in 1880 was 1,425,014 bushels 
of wheat, 640,900 bushels of oats, 455, 968 bushels of corn, 107,116 



The Heart of the Continent. 31 

bushels of barley, besides large crops of all kinds of garden 
products. As. a grazing region Colorado offers many advan- 
tages, the grass affording abundant food nearly all the year, and 
the mildness of the climate and the protection of the timber-clad 
mountains rendering shelter almost unnecessary. The business of 
stock-raising in the State is yet in its infancy, but the value of the 
herds is about $16,000,000, and the sales for last year were 
$1,500,000 more than for the year before. There is literally no 
• expense about raising cattle except the pay of herders, and 
nearly all that is received from sales is clear profit. Counting 
interest on capital, the Colorado stockman expects to average a 
profit of from twenty to fifty per cent, a year. Sheep-raising is 
even more sure and profitable, as they increase more rapidly. 
But the great industry of Colorado, that which has made this 
six-year-old State the gathering-place of capitalists and fortune- 
seekers from every land beneath the sun, that which has made 
its name a talismanic word throughout the world, is its mar- 
velous mines of gold and silver. They are the wonder of man- 
kind. They have eclipsed the dazzling miracles of Aladdin 
and his lamp. They have enabled the rude day-laborers of 
ten or fifteen years ago to vie with the Rothschilds, and to sur- 
pass kings and emperors, in the colossal proportions of their for- 
tunes. They have empowered the raw grocer's clerk of 1877 to 
astonish a continent with the magnificence of his architectural 
creations in 1881. They have turned the heads of the world, and 
enabled the children of this generation to smile at the most 
gorgeous fairy-tales that amazed their fathers and mothers, as 
trivial and tame, when they can rub daily against the jewel-clad 
creatures of infinitely more marvelous stories in real life. Colo- 
rado leads all the world as a producer of gold and silver. The 
names of Denver, Leadville, Georgetown, Silver Cliff, Gunnison, 
Boulder and a score of other wild Colorado mining-camps, many 
of which were undreamt of ten or fifteen years ago, are as well 
and widely known as New York, Paris, London or Rome. In 
twenty -three years the State has yielded $140,584,752 of gold and 
silver bullion. Last year the yield was $23,687,685, or about 
one-third of the total product of the United States, and an increase 
of nearly $7,000,000 over the yield of 1879.'„ 



32 



The Heart of the Continent. 



And yet, with all this vast production, the crust of its wealth is 
hardly broken, the surface dirt of its vast deposits of precious 
metal is scarcely scraped off. Thousands of square miles of moun- 




are yet to be pros- 
pected. Hundreds 
of mines, that shall 
some day make all 
that now are known 
seem small by com- 



View near Chillicothe, Iowa. 



parison, have never yet been touched by miner's pick. The great 
mining fortunes of the world are yet unmade. 

No region on all the beauteous globe offers more attractions or 
presents more opportunities to the nature-lover, the artist, the 
tourist, the capitalist, the man of nerve and enterprise, or the 
invalid, to the seeker for recreation, health or fortune, than Colo- 
rado, the Centennial State, the gold-and-jewel-decked queen of 
the Rockies. 



THE SIX GREAT STATES AND THEIR PRODUCTS. 

The best evidence of a country's productiveness is the surplus 
which it sends to market. In order to show that the claim that 
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad traverses the most 
fertile section of the West, North and Southwest, is not based 
on mere empty assertion, we have compiled from the report of 



The Heart of the Continent. 33 

the Chicago Board of Trade, a table showing the receipts of a 
few leading articles at Chicago for 1880, and the channels through 
which they were received : 

By the *By all other 

C. B. & Q. R. K. Koutes. 

Wheat, bushels 6,928,638 16,618,969 

Corn, bushels 40,920,000 56,343,000 

Oats, bushels 7,978,000 15,513,000 

Rye, bushels 587,000 1,348,000 

Cattle, number ..- 425,371 957,106 

Hogs, number 2,156,432 4,992,025 

Sheep, number 60,223 295,589 

Provisions, pounds 51,715,000 112,722,000 

Lard, pounds 24,705,000 43,682,000 

Wool, pounds ... .. 18,034,000 22,162,000 

Hides, pounds 14,773,000 58,351,000 



*A11 other routes included 13 railroads, lake and canal. 

The shipments of lumber and shingles from Chicago for the 
year 1880, were 875,150,000 feet of lumber, of which the C B. 
& Q. R. R carried 349,359,000 feet ; and of shingles 110,866,000, 
of which the C. B. & Q R R carried 71,045,000. 

It is scarcely deemed necessary to cite further evidence of the 
unsurpassed productiveness of the States penetrated in all direc- 
tions by the railroads embraced in the Chicago, Burlington & 
Quincy system, than is furnished by the above figures ; but for the 
purpose of conveying a more perfect idea as to the position which 
they occupy toward the remaining thirty-three States and eight 
Territories within the Union, a statement has been carefully com- 
piled which exhibits the total yield of wheat, corn and oats, with 
the number of cattle and hogs in the United States and Territo- 
ries in 1880, together with the proportion produced by the five 
great States of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska. 
The comparative figures are as follows : 

Wheat, bu. 

Illinois.. 60,959,000 

Iowa 33,178,000 

Missouri 29,563,000 

Kansas 20,336,000 

Nebraska 12,938,000 



Totals 156,958,000 

Total U. S. 1880. .498,550,000 1 



Corn, bu. 


Oats, bu, 


Cattle, No. 


Hogs, No. 


353,697,000 


63,947,000 


3,384,338 


3,303,000 


360,193,000 


49,983,000 


8,613,006 


8,778,400 


160,463,000 


35,314,000 


3,080,933 


3,020,000 


106,818,000 


8,583,000 


1,441,557 


1,785,000 


59,508,000 


5,584,000 


858,553 


1,320,000 


849,079,000 


153,350,000 


9,377,379 


11,105,400 


717,435,000 


417,885,000 


30,093,854 


36,247,603 



34 



The Heart of the Continent. 



It will be seen by the preceding table, that the States named 
produced about one-third of the wheat, nearly one-half of the 
corn, over one-third of the oats and cattle, and nearly thirty-two 
per cent, of the hogs. 

DEBT AND TAXATION. 

The State, county and municipal indebtedness of the country 
traversed by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad system 
is lower, in proportion to the wealth and population, than in any 




portion of the 
United States ; 
and as the con- 
s t i t u t i o n s 
of nearly, if 

not all of the States contain clauses 
prohibiting counties, towns and 
municipal corporations from in- 
creasing their indebtedness beyond 
very moderate limits, the taxes will View " ear Villiscn - Iowa - 

continue to decrease, rather than grow, with the expansion of 
the resources of the country ; hence the immigrant need not 
fear that his substance will be absorbed by the tax gatherer, as is 
the case in many other sections of the country. 



III. 

The Heart's Great Artery of Trade and 

Travel. 



Such is The Heart of the Continent; six glorious hearts, and 
every heart a queenly State, all grouped in one majestic heart 
of hearts. It is a realm of infinite resources and beauty, a 
land of health and plenty and illimitable capacities, in which a 
hundred millions of prosperous and happy people will some day, 
and that not far in the future, find homes and fortunes and all 
that makes life worth the living. 

Through all this magnificent empire, this vast continental 
heart, like a mighty artery or system of arteries, along which 
pulsates the life-blood of progress and prosperity, stretches one of 
the grandest highways of ancient or modern times. The Chicago, 
Burlington & Quincy railroad is one of the giant corporations 
of the world. It is worthy of the region that it traverses with its 
four thousand miles of iron track. The world has looked on 
amazed at the development of this new empire of the American 
West. Its growth has been as wonderful as its own vastness 
and resources. Its grand valleys and plains which, scarcely a 
generation ago, were almost as much an unknown land as the 
shores of Zambesi or Ngami, have sprung into civilization, popu- 
lation, prosperity and power like the creation of an omnipotent 
enchanter. In the olden times such growth, such progress, such 
marvelous settlement and development of regions so vast and so 
remote would have been impossible. The old-fashioned, lumber- 
ing wagons and stage-coaches never could have transported the 
inhabitants and the supplies. The bare necessaries of life for 
such multitudes never could have been brought such vast dis- 
tances over such rugged and trackless wastes, by any of the old- 
time methods. The enchanter's hand, the necromancer's wand, 



36 The Heart of the Continent. 

that has wrought the mighty change, is the hand, the wand, of the 
railroad builder and manager. The grand civilizing and develop- 
ing agents have been the railroads. They have brought the vast 
fields and pastures, the rich mines, the boundless opportunities 
and resources of the great West within reach of the overcrowded 
human lives of the East. They have put the millions on millions 
of fertile western acres, that had never felt plow or harrow, within 
a few hours' travel of millions of hard-worked and poverty- 
stricken tillers of eastern flint-hills and sand-barrens. Under their 
magical influence the "West has sprung into imperial power, as 
sprang Minerva from the brain of Jove, full grown and fully 
panoplied, without having ever known a period of childhood 
or pupilage. 

And among all the great railways that have contributed to the 
grand transformation scene, that have aided in the work of 
turning the desert into a garden, and converting the solitary 
places into cities swarming with busy and prosperous people and 
abounding in all the refinements and luxury of the world's oldest 
and richest and most favored capitals and marts, none deserves a 
higher place, for none has done more, than the Chicago, Burling- 
ton & Quincy. And in its glorious mission of opening up and 
developing the newest and grandest empire on the globe, it has 
built up itself in a fashion without parallel. 

Starting in 1849 as the " Aurora Branch," with thirteen miles of 
road from Aurora to Turner junction on the old Galena railway, 
it rose in 1854 to the control of a line from Chicago to Gales- 
burg, a hundred and sixty-four miles. To-day, standing with one 
foot on the Great Lakes and the other on the Rocky Mountains, 
it is a veritable Colossus of Roads among the railway giants 
of the new world. With one mighty hand it grasps the margins 
of our vast inland seas, and with the other it holds the turbid 
floods of the Father of Waters and his grandest tributary, 
the swift-rolling, muddy Missouri, while with ever-extending 
arms of iron and links of steel it clasps to its bosom the six 
imperial commonwealths that form the heart of the continent. 
With its grand trunk lines, it binds together in manifold links of 
mutual interest and profitable trade, nearly all the greatest cities 
of the West — Chicago, St. Louis, Peoria, Burlington, Keokuk, 



The Heart of the Continent. 



37 



Rock Island, Hannibal, Quincy, St. Joseph, Kansas City, 
Atchison, Omaha, Council Bluffs, Lincoln and Denver. With 
its innumerable branches and connections it radiates from these 
centers to every point of the compass, opening up an empire 
more glorious than Roman legion or Grecian phalanx ever 
fought for. It constitutes a direct route of communication 
between such terminal points on the east as Chicago, Peoria, 




St. Louis, 
Denver 
and Leacl- 
ville, and all 
the illimitable 
West and South- 
west, opening 
to the business men 

View near Stanton, Iowa. f eastern cities the 

richest portions of Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, 
Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona; and ere long the 
famed "Land of the Montezumas" will be added to the mighty 
list of regions made easily accessible by its untiring steeds of iron 
and steel. More than 200,000 square miles of the fairest and most 
fertile lands beneath the sun are directly tributary to it. Upon 
,its vast network of lines, like radiant jewels on a multiplex 



38 



The Heart of the Continent. 



necklace, are strung nearly 1,000 beautiful and thriving cities, 
towns and villages. It employs a grand army of 20,000 men. 
A trip over all its lines is a journey of one-sixth of the distance 
around the globe, a complete education in geography. Here, 
jump into a palatial parlor or sleeping-car at Chicago, and take a 
bird's-eye view of one of the grandest routes in all the world. 




View near Red Oak, Iowa. 



IV. 
From the Great Lakes to the Rockies. 



Chicago is the starting point. The seven wonders of the world 
have had an eighth one added to them, and its name is Chicago. 
Fifty years ago, a rude fort and Indian trading-post in an un- 
known, savage-infested wilderness. In 1840, a straggling village 
of 4,470 inhabitants; and in 1850, a town of but 28,260 people; 
to-day, it is the third city of the new world in population, the 
second in business importance, and the first in enterprise and 
promise. With a population of 600, 000, and miles of the finest 
buildings in the world, a lake and railway commerce second only 
to that of New York, and with the whole grand growing West, 
Southwest and Northwest pouring their vast trade into its lap, 
Chicago's future is grand beyond the tongue or pen of uninspired 
prophet to portray. The next census will place it next to New 
York in population, and no one can say that ultimately even New 
York will not have to play second to the young municipal giant 
of the lakes. 

The journeyer is standing in the magnificent Chicago, Burling- 
ton & Quincy depot, stretching from Madison street 1,100 feet 
in length to Adams, and from Canal street to the Chicago river, 
300 feet in width. The building is one of the most imposing in 
the city and contains elegant waiting-rooms, dining-rooms, news 
depots, barber-shop and bath-rooms, and every possible conveni- 
ence and comfort for travelers ' 'All aboard ! " cries the conductor, 
and the tourist steps on board of a train of palace sleeping, parlor 
and smoking cars, with a magnificent dining-car attached, and in 
a moment is whirling on his way out of the great city. Twelve 
miles through a constant succession of beautiful suburban resi- 
dences, embowered in shrubbery and flowers, and Riverside is 
reached, on the banks of the Des Plaines river, up which Louis 



40 The Heart of the Continent. 

Joliet and Father Marquette ascended, in 1673, from the village 
of the Illinois Indians to the lakes. In 1675, Father Marquette, 
then nearing the end of his life, passed this place, with his two 
faithful attendants, Pierre and Jacques, on his way to Kaskaskia, 
where he held a grand council with the Illinois Indians. Five hun- 
dred chiefs and old men were seated in a circle, behind them 
stood 1,500 youths and warriors, and in the rear of these all the 
women and children of the village, while Marquette preached the 
gospel of Jesus Christ to them. Shortly after Easter, 1675, 
Marquette, accompanied by a great crowd of the delighted 
Indians, made his last trip up the river. 

Through lovely suburban towns and homes, twenty-six miles 
further, and Aurora comes into view. It is picturesquely situ- 
ated on Fox river, which was explored by Joliet and Marquette 
in 1673. The first white man's cabin ever erected in the county 
was built on the bank of the river in 1833. Here was the starting- 
point of the vast Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad system, 
with the little thirteen-mile-long "Aurora Branch." The car and 
locomotive works at this place employ nearly 1,500 men, whose 
wages amount to $80,000 a month, and the annual business aggre- 
gates nearly $1,500,000. 

Piano, fifteen miles further on, is the residence of Joseph Smith, 
the leader of the anti-polygamous Mormons, and a son of the old 
prophet. 

Sixty-one miles from Chicago is Somonauk station, near which 
the Sac Indians, in 1832, massacred three families of white 
settlers — Halls, Daviesses and Pettigrews — numbering fifteen 
persons. Two young girls, Sylvia and Rachel Hall, were carried 
off as prisoners, but were afterward ransomed through the efforts 
of a Winnebago chief. 

Princeton, forty-five miles onward, was long an important station 
on the old State road from Peoria to Galena. It was settled by 
colonists from Northampton, Massachusetts, and until the close 
of the Black Hawk war, in 1833, was much harassed by Indians. 

Twenty-six miles further is passed the pretty little village of 
Kewanee, the name meaning in the Winnebago tongue "Prairie 
Hen." 

Galesburg, a hundred and sixty-four miles from Chicago, is the 



The Heart of the Continent. 41 

junction of the main line of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 
road with its Peoria and Quincy divisions. It is a prosperous 
city of nearly 15,000 inhabitants, surrounded by a splendid farm- 
ing country. It is the seat of a university, a college, and several 
excellent schools. It has a number of extensive manufacturing 
establishments, and railroad machine and repair shops. 

At Burlington the majestic Mississippi is crossed on a bridge 
which, with its approaches, is over a mile in length, and is a 
masterpiece of engineering skill and taste. From the bridge a 
magnificent view is obtained of the river and its green dot-like 
islands, and of the beautiful city rising street above street in a 
grand semicircular amphitheatre of hills. In 1680, Father Henne- 
pin, with two companions, Accau and Du Gay, under instructions 
from La Salle, explored the upper Mississippi ; and about the last 
of March of that year, their canoe was tied up on the site of the 
present city of Burlington. Amid these grand hills was a favorite 
meeting-place and camping-ground of the warlike tribes, whose 
ownership of the region dates back into the misty days of legend 
and conjecture. Here was the last vantage ground of the famous 
chief, Black Hawk. Here, in the winter of 1831, he crossed 
the river on his way to the war against the whites, in which 
Abraham Lincoln, as a captain of militia, saw his first service as 
a soldier. And near here, after his death in October, 1838, he was 
buried in a sitting posture, with a staff in his hand and a tepee of 
stakes around and over his heroic form. Burlington is one of the 
most picturesque cities on the Mississippi. It has a population of 
about 30,000, with handsome public buildings and private resi- 
dences, twelve schools and a university, a public school system 
that was awarded the prize at the Philadelphia Centennial Expo- 
sition. Seven railroads, two daily through lines of steamers and 
a number of local packets, eighty-seven manufacturing establish- 
ments whose yearly product runs near $10,000,000, mercantile 
houses whose annual sales amount to $20,000,000, churches of 
nearly all denominations found in the United States, stock-yards, 
elevators, breweries, foundries and mills, five newspapers, one of 
which is known throughout the world, one of the handsomest opera- 
houses in the country, and a boat-club house that is unequaled in 
the "West. Its grain and lumber business is immense. Its people 



42 



The Heart of the Continent. 



are enterprising, cultivated and hospitable, and no western or 
eastern city can boast more charming society. The scenery all 
around the city is romantic in the highest degree. The view from 
North Hill, in the upper part of the city, is a glorious vista of 
river and island, woodland, field, meadow and rolling hills. Just 




Scene crossing the "Mighty Missouri," at Plattsmouth, Nebraska. 

below the city is Cascade Falls, a dainty little miniature of 
Minnehaha. The vast rock-quarries all around the city are an 
almost unbroken mass of crinoids or stone lilies, the most beautiful 
of fossils. Many of the finest cabinets in the world have speci- 
mens from here, and almost daily parties of tourists may be 



The Heart of the Continent. 43 

seen in every direction, hammer in hand, in search of treasures 
rarely to be found elsewhere. A little collection made by Dr. 
Wachsmuth, of Burlington, was recently sold for $5,000. 

The whole journey from Chicago to Burlington has been a two- 
hundred-and-seven-mile-long vista of beauty; a flying panorama 
of prosperous towns and glorious country homes ; a whirling vision 
of the finest farming region on the globe; of handsome houses, 
surrounded by groves and shrubbery and flowers, waving grain- 
fields, orchards, vineyards, and green pastures, besprinkled with 
clover-blooms and dotted with sleek herds of thoroughbred cattle. 
The route through Iowa is much the same, except that the country 
is more undulating and bears more evidence of newness. 

Twenty-eight miles west of Burlington is Mount Pleasant, "the 
Athens of Iowa," famous for its colleges and schools; and where 
is found in great abundance a rarely beautiful stone, the star 
coral, that takes the polish of marble with all the exquisite mark- 
ings of coral. 

A rush of forty-seven miles further west, and Ottumwa comes 
into view. It is one of the most important cities in Iowa, situated 
on the Des Moines river, whose rapids furnish water-power 
enough to run a thousand mills and factories. It has a population 
of about 12,000, having more than doubled in ten years. It is 
surrounded by extensive coal-fields, immense bodies of valuable 
timber, and as fine farming lands as ever plowshare cut furrow 
in. It has a hundred and ten manufacturing establishments, 
employing a capital of $1,032,935, and turning out in manufactured 
wares $3,000,000 a year. Its wholesale trade last year amounted 
to $2,500,000, its freight shipments were 178,440,000 pounds, and 
its receipts 223,116,000 pounds. Four railways, beside the Chi- 
cago, Burlington & Quincy, center in the place. It has three 
first-class public schools and several private ones, seventeen 
churches, two theatres, five newspapers, nine prominent hotels, 
gas-works, water-works, street railway, telephones and all the 
other conveniences and luxuries of metropolitanism, except a debt. 
It does not owe a dollar. 

On through an ever- varying, beautiful succession of flourishing 
young towns and cities like Albia, Chariton, Creston, Villisca, 
Red Oak, Hastings, Glenwood, the seat of the State asylum for 



44 The Heart of the Continent. 

feeble-minded children; through a grand, far-stretching fairyland 
of gently rolling prairie and wildwood, rivers, lakes and brook- 
lets; through cosy farms, with their fertile grain-fields and clus- 
tering orchards, neat houses lost in foliage and flowers, pastures 
in which the fat cattle and horses stand knee-deep in clover and 
grass; and Pacific Junction is reached. From here the main line 
of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy road goes west by way of 
Plattsmouth, where the Missouri river is crossed on one of the 
grandest bridges that ever spanned the turbid flood. 

Nineteen miles up the river from Pacific Junction, two hundred 
and ninety-four miles west of Burlington, and five hundred and 
one west of Chicago, the flying palaces-on-wheels sweep into the 
immense and stately union depot in the suburbs of Council Bluffs. 
Until 1846, the ground where Council Bluffs now stands was a 
Pottawattamie Indian reservation. About the time of their re- 
moval, the Mormons, driven out of Illinois, halted here on their 
strange migration westward. Brigham Young, Orson Hyde and 
the other leaders selected a spot on the Nebraska side of the 
Missouri river, about six miles north of where Omaha now stands, 
and calling it Winter Quarters, established a settlement of some 
15,000 people. The Indians compelled them to recross to the 
Iowa side, and they settled on and around the site of the present 
city of Council Bluffs, which they called Kanesville, in honor of 
Thomas L. Kane, a brother of the Arctic explorer, Dr. Elisha 
Kent Kane, who had through the eastern press denounced the 
savagery of the murder by the Illinoisans of the Mormon prophet, 
Joe Smith. Kane went into the late war as commander of the 
Pennsylvania "Bucktail Regiment," and led a brigade with 
distinction. A battalion of three hundred of these Mormons 
volunteered for the Mexican war, and served heroically in the 
famous overland expedition under Philip St. George Cooke, 
Sterling Price and A. "W. Doniphan. A postoffice was established 
at Kanesville, now Council Bluffs, in 1848. This was the great 
crossing-place on the Missouri of the California gold-seekers in 
1849 and the two succeeding years. The Mormons set out on 
their pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem at Salt Lake in 1847, and 
most of them followed in detachments between that year and 
1850. The name of Kanesville was changed to Council Bluffs in 



The Heart of the Continent. 



45 



1853, and the town proper was laid off in 1854. It now has a 
population of over 20,000. Seven great railways converge within 
its borders. During the past year 103,646 car-loads of freight 




View approaching Council Bluffs, Iowa. 

was received in the city, the total tonnage reaching the vast fig- 
ures of 2,072,920,000 pounds. Council Bluffs handled 600,000 
bushels of grain during the year, and 259,495 head of cattle, 
sheep and hogs. The improvements in the city last year footed 
up over $1,000,000. The State asylum for the deaf and dumb is 
located here. There are eight public schools, and a number of 
excellent private institutions. The city has many handsome 



46 The Heart of the Continent. 

public and private buildings, hotels, opera-houses, churches, street 
railway in every direction, several prosperous manufactories, 
and large elevators, and is growing solidly and surely. 

Leaving the union depot at Council Bluffs, the train speeds 
across a magnificent iron bridge that spans the swift-rolling, 
muddy Missouri, and in a few minutes lands its living cargo in 
the depot at Omaha. 

There are four cities in the United States that claim with reason 
the title of "Magic Cities." They are Chicago, Illinois; Denver 
and Leadville, Colorado ; and Omaha, Nebraska. On Saturday, 
July 21, 1804, the expedition of Lewis and Clark, sent out 
by the administration of President Jefferson to explore the vast 
unknown regions of the Northwest, landed at Plattsmouth, 
twenty miles below where Omaha now stands, and camped 
for the night. Next day, the party, consisting of forty-two men, 
marched ten miles and camped on the site of the present town of 
Bellevue, Sarpy county. Here they spent five days repairing 
equipments, dressing skins and arranging for a council with the 
Indians. A grand pow-wow was held August 2, on the spot 
where the government in 1819 established Fort Atkinson, after- 
ward called Fort Calhoun. The town of Fort Calhoun now 
occupies the site. It lies sixteen miles above Omaha in a direct 
line, and forty miles by the river. Lewis and Clark called the 
place Council Bluffs, on account of the council held by them 
with the Indians, and of its convenience to the Otoes, Pawnees, 
Pawnee Loups, Sioux and Mahas or Omahas. The Iowa city, 
which has since appropriated the name, is not near the scene of 
the council from which it is derived. 

The present site of Omaha was entered as a homestead or pre- 
emption claim in 1853, by William D. Brown, who had for two or 
three years been ferrying the California gold-hunters across the 
river at this point. Omaha was founded in 1854. Up to that 
time it had simply been known as the "Lone Tree Ferry." 
To-day, a handsomely built city of 40,000 inhabitants crowns the 
magnificent bluffs, which then were in an unknown land. Nine 
railways virtually center in the city, one of which, the Burlington 
& Missouri River road, a part of the great Chicago, Burlington & 
Qumcy system, has been one of the grandest agencies in the 



The Heart of the Continent. 47 

marvelous development of Nebraska. Its land grant embraced a 
vast tract of 2,500,000 acres of the richest and most beautiful 
lands in the Platte and Kepublican valleys. It is estimated that 
this company alone has added 250,000 to the population of the 
State, and it still has 500,000 acres of the finest lands in the world 
for sale at from two to ten dollars an acre on long time and easy 
terms. The Missouri river is spanned at Omaha by a magnificent 
bridge that cost $1,600,000. The situation of the city is strik- 
ingly picturesque, with an amphitheatre of lofty bluffs sweeping 
around behind it in a grand semicircle. The city's manufactures 
amount to $20,000,000 a year, the Union Pacific car shops alone 
covering thirty acres of ground, employing nearly 2,000 hands, 
and turning out annually $3,000,000 worth of work. The pork- 
packing and meat-canning business amounts to over $2,500,000 a 
year, and the product of the breweries and distilleries to nearly 
$7,000,000. The Omaha smelting-works are, with two excep- 
tions, the largest in the world, their business last year amounting 
to over $6,000,000. The live stock trade aggregates nearly 
$9,000,000 a year, and its wholesale and commission trade to 
upwards of $15,000,000. Her schools are one of Omaha's special 
prides. The high-school building, which cost $250,000, standing 
on the summit of a lofty hill in the rear of the city, on the site 
where stood the old State Capitol building, its tall spire reaching 
three hundred and ninety feet above the level of the river, is the 
most conspicuous object in the city, and can be seen for miles in 
every direction. Besides this splendid institution, there are five 
handsome public schools, an Episcopal seminary for young ladies, 
a Catholic college and the Nebraska business college. There are 
five public libraries, twenty-eight churches, elegant opera-houses 
and hotels, a government building that cost $350,000, fourteen 
English papers, five of them daily; one Danish, one Bohemian 
and five German papers. The improvements during last year 
aggregated $2,241,000, and the rush of building still goes on. 
No city in the Union is growing faster in proportion to its present 
population, and every indication promises a grand future for 
Omaha. At Council Bluffs, Montana, California, and Oregon 
passengers by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy are transferred 
to the Union Pacific in the union depot. 



48 



The Heart of the Continent. 



Leaving the immense union depot, swarming day and night 
with emigrants, home-seekers from every land and nation, the 
journeyer westward by the great Burlington Route finds him- 

self whirling along the 
margin of the Big Muddy 
over the splendidly equip- 
ped and ballasted track of 
the Burlington & Missouri 
River road. Sixteen miles 
of flying river and meadow 
and far-stretching grain- 
field on one side, and ro- 
mantic bluffs and hills on 
the other, puts the train at 
Oreapolis. Here the Omaha 
line joins the main Chicago, 
Burlington & Quincy line, 
which crosses the Missouri 
river at Plattsmouth, the 
landing-point of Lewis and 
Clark's romantic exploring 
expedition seventy- 
eight years ago. The 
bridge and its approaches 
over the Missouri at Platts- 
mouth is nearly two miles 
long, and i s . one of the 
most notable pieces of en- 
gineering in the country. 
At Oreapolis the beautiful 
Platte river is crossed, and the train Hies on through an enchanting 
succession of waving fields of grain, groves of elms and cotton- 
woods, and vast natural pastures reaching to the horizon on every 
side. Tasteful farm-houses and young orchards dot all the land- 
scape with sweet suggestions of home in what scarce twenty 
years ago was a wilderness almost unbroken. A two hours' run 
from Oreapolis brings into view the spires and towers of Lincoln, 
the capital of the State, a beautifully built and prosperous city of 




Passenger Station ut Lincoln, Nebraska, and 
view of the Great Salt Basin. 



The Heart of the Continent. 49 

15000 inhabitants. It is in the center of the rich and fertile South 
Platte country, as it is called ; here too are also found the salt 
basins, where salt-making is carried on. There are many handsome 
buildings in the place, among them the State Capitol, the State 
university and agricultural college and the Nebraska hospital 
for the insane, the United States postoffice and court-house, which 
cost $150,000, and the high-school building, which cost $40,000. 
Besides these there are numerous elegant business blocks and 
private residences.* Three divisions of the Burlington & Missouri 
River road center here, and in the magnificent depot are the 
offices of the land department of the company, a department 
which has done more perhaps than any other agency in bringing 
in settlers and developing the grand resources of the State. The 
State penitentiary is located just south of the city. There are a 
number of flourishing manufacturing establishments. The city 
is charmingly situated on high, rolling hills, and is growing with 
wonderful rapidity. Divisions of the Burlington & Missouri 
Kiver road lead from here to Columbus and Central City on the 
Union Pacific road and the Platte river, and to Nebraska City, 
Nemaha and Atchison on the Missouri. Ninety-seven miles fur- 
ther, along the divide between the Platte and Republican rivers, 
through a land of wheat and corn fields, orchards and rich 
pastures, everywhere watered by pure streams, and beautified by 
groves of willows, elms, maples and cottonwoods, and dotted 
with thriving young towns like Crete, Exeter, Fairmont, Grafton 
and Harvard, brings the pilgrim to Hastings, where one arm of the 
Burlington & Missouri road reaches out to Kearney on the Union 
Pacific and Platte river, and the other to Red Cloud on the 
Republican. 

Red Cloud takes its name from the famous Sioux Chief who 
was born here. It is a flourishing little town of about 1,200 peo- 
ple, on the Burlington air-line from Chicago to Denver. From 
Red Cloud west, the route for over two hundred miles follows the 
windings of the great Republican valley, than which the world 
contains no more fertile and beautiful body of agricultural and 
pastoral lands. All the most nutritious grasses grow wild in rank 
luxuriance, and there are many acres yet untaken and open to 
all the world. In these vast unclaimed pastures tens of thousands 



50 The Heart of the Continent. 

of cattle and sheep find rich abundance all the year round, 
without expense to their owners. It costs little to start in a busi- 
ness which, with any ordinary care, yields a fortune in five or six 
years. 

The Republican valley was historic ground generations before 
the first white settler ever planted his feet upon the eastern shores 
of the United States. In 1541, seventy-nine years before the land- 
ing of the pilgrims on Plymouth rock, Coronado, the lieutenant 
of Cortez, set out from Mexico with eight hundred cavalry, to 
subdue the seven cities of Cibola, that rumor said lay far to the 
north and were very rich. Some mythical personage appeared to 
him somewhere near Santa Fe with stories of fabulous wealth of 
a land far northeast. Inflamed with avarice and ambition he 
pushed his way into the Republican valley, leaving perpetual 
remembrances of his march in the names of rivers and places along 
the route, Las Animas, Las Cruces, Espiritu Santo, San Jose, 
San Joaquin and many others. Near Riverton, on the Bur- 
lington & Missouri River road, west of Red Cloud, remains of 
ancient Spanish saddles, stirrups and portions of armor have been 
found. Here Coronado heard of a great river to the north, and 
discovered the Platte. He was still told of a greater river to the 
eastward. He started to find it, but was driven back by the 
Indians, and without having seen it he named it the ' ' River of 
the Holy Ghost." It was, of course, the Missouri. Coronado 
returned to Mexico, reorganized his forces and set out again to 
occupy and hold this magnificent garden-like region, but was 
defeated and killed by the natives before he accomplished his 
great design. 

Thirteen miles west of Red Cloud is Riverton, in the center of 
the " Nebraska Geyser System," a continuation of the great 
Yellowstone Park geyser bed. These in Nebraska have long been 
extinct, but the strange looking cones and chimneys, craters and 
scape-pipes still remain as perfect as in the far-back period when 
they spouted and sputtered as though Beelzebub was making 
soup of sinners at their deep-down furnace fires. 

Near Republican City, twenty-eight miles further west, amid a 
wild tangle of geysers and curious cliffs, are found the remains 
of countless mastodons, mammoths and other extinct races of 



The Heart of the Continent. 



51 



animals, among them a woolly elephant with long, curling tusks 
like those of a gigantic boar, the bones showing that the monster 
must have been nearly twenty feet in height. The whole region 
abounds with these strange relics of monsters that browsed, when 
the world was young, amid sky-sweeping groves of sequoias, of 
which the big trees of California are degenerate descendants. 




View on the Platte River. 

At Arapahoe, thirty-nine miles on toward sunset, is one of the 
most remarkable deposits of silicates in the world, left by the 
geysers of long ago. 

Culbertson, fifty-one miles onward, is in the center of an almost 
boundless cattle range, where stock by hundreds of thousands of 
head can be raised at comparatively little expense, grass all the 
year, abundant water, mild climate, and even salt springs for 



52 The Heart of the Continent. 

salting, leaving nothing to be desired. Thousands of square miles 
are open to any and every comer with his herd of cattle or drove 
of sheep. 

Eight miles west of Culbertson is Massacre Canon, where, 
about ten years ago, the Sioux surprised and slaughtered a large 
number of Pawnees. Skulls and bones of the victims are still 
to be seen strewn in the wild gulch. 

# Shortly after crossing the Colorado line near Collinsville is the 
scene of the bloody battle of Arickaree Fork, between the Indians 
and United States troops. 

On, on, through a region which the Chicago, Burlington & 
Quincy road has just opened up to civilization and improvement. 
Through far-reaching vistas of pasture-lands, and here and there 
a dreary stretch of alkali and sage-brush. Through a region, of 
great possibilities, where everything as yet is new and crude. On, 
on, across innumerable little tributaries of the Republican and 
the Platte, " arroyos " as they call them here, foaming torrents in 
the rainy season, dry beds of sand at other times, but always 
yielding water to any one who will dig a few feet for it. 

On, till at last the grand Pocky Mountains loom into view, 
and with a shrill shriek of delight the locomotive rushes into the 
Queen City of the Rockies. Denver, a municipal miracle; an 
infant in years, a giant in development. Unheard of, unknown 
even as a wild, frontier camping-place for scouts and prospectors, 
until the Pike's Peak gold craze of 1858-9. To-day, one of the 
most prosperous, beautiful and famous cities of the new world. 
Standing on a beautiful high plateau, 5,244 feet above the level 
of the sea, and sixteen miles from the foothills which, in the 
pure, transparent Colorado atmosphere, seem hardly a half-hour's 
walk away, the site of the city could not be more charming. It 
commands a view of the cloud-capped Rocky Mountains for 
three hundred miles. Seventy miles north-west, in plain sight is 
Long's Peak, 14,271 feet, or two and three-quarter miles, high. 
Far away to the southward is Pike's Peak, 14,147 feet high, and 
all the space between is cleft by mighty peaks, many of them 
glistening boneath their crowns of everlasting ice and snow. As 
a gifted writer, gazing on these majestic scenes, exclaims: 
Imagine the whole of New England lifted bodily a mile above 



The Heart of the Continent. 53 

the sea-level; add 3,500 feet to the height of Mount Washington ; 
put in a dozen other peaks of equal elevation ; throw in, promis- 
cuously, a couple of hundred other peaks from ten to fourteen 
thousand feet high ; exaggerate the Notch, the Pool and Flume a 
dozen times, and multiply them by a score ; add parks larger than 
any of her States ; and gardens filled with quaint statuary fash- 
ioned by the attrition of time and wind and wave ; run tunnels 
here and there into the mountains, and sink numberless shafts a 
thousand feet below the surface ; underlay the whole vast area 
with miles on miles of gold and silver ; shut off the misty breezes 
of the sea, and substitute the pure, exhilarating atmosphere of 
the plains; smite rock-ribbed mountain-sides, and call forth 
numberless mineral springs of great curative virtues ; and then 
you have a faint approximation only of the boundless attractions 
which Colorado offers to its visitors. 

In the midst, the very heart of these sublime scenes, Denver 
sits enthroned, beauteous queen of a surpassingly lovely realm. 
Sprung from the nothingness of twenty years ago, from the 
villagehood of ten years ago, she claims to-day a population of 
65,000, and has 50,000, an increase of 15,000 since the census of 
1880. Over 1,000 buildings, aggregating nearly $3,000,000 in cost, 
were erected last year. The public and private buildings are on 
a scale of magnificence unsurpassed in the country, outside of 
New York or Chicago. Tabor opera-house, built by a man who 
in 1877 kept a little country store in Leadville, cost $875,000, 
and has no superior in the Union. Tabor block cost nearly 
$300,000, the Windsor hotel $300,000, and a. government building 
to cost $500,000 is to be put up at once. The St. James, Ameri- 
can and Inter-ocean, Charpiot's and the Brunswick are all hotels 
that would be creditable in any city. Denver is a port of deliv- 
ery, and has a branch of the United States mint. There are 
many elegant churches, St. John's Episcopal cathedral havmg cost 
$125,000, the First Presbyterian and Central Baptist edifices being 
specially noticeable. The Catholics are preparing to build a mag- 
nificent cathedral. The Argo smelting works, owned by Senator 
N. P. Hill and Boston parties, is the largest establishment of the 
kind in America. Denver has three morning daily newspapers, 
"The Tribune," "The News" and "The Republican;" two evening 



54 



The Heart of the Continent. 



dailies, "The Times" and "The World;" one German daily 
and ten or twelve weeklies. One of the weekly papers is "The 
Great West," edited by the famous Brick Pomeroy, who has just 
built a $30,000 residence here, and whose career would make a 




Scene on the Eepnblican River. 



dozen yellow-back romances. The city has miles of street rail- 
way, fire-alarm telegraph, telephones and electric light, is supplied 
with pure water by the Holly system of water-works, and a con- 
siderable part of it heated by a steam heating company. A circle 



The Heart of the Continent. 55 

railroad runs entirely round the place, about fifteen miles. The 
streets are very fine, eighty feet wide, of natural gravel and 
ornamented by 200,000 shade trees, which are daily watered. 
Broadway, the fashionable drive, is a mile and a half long and a 
hundred feet wide, and every afternoon swarms with fast teams 
and handsome equipages. The fair grounds, with a splendid 
half-mile race-track, are near the city. There are no parks, and 
surrounded as Denver is with so many of the grandest scenes on 
earth, there is little need of any. Denver is the centering-place of 
some of the most important railroads upon the continent : the 
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy — "Burlington Route," as it is 
popularly called, the only direct through line to Chicago ; three 
divisions of the Union Pacific, including the Kansas Pacific ; the 
Denver & Rio Grande, opening up some of the most gorgeous 
mountain scenery that human eyes ever beheld ; the Denver & 
South Park ; the Denver & New Orleans, and the Denver, Utah & 
Pacific. It is the central point from which all Colorado business 
and travel radiate. Near at hand and easy of access are all the 
famous scenes of the Garden of the Gods, Boulder and Clear 
Creek Canons, North, Middle and Estes Parks ; all the great 
bonanza mines of Leadville, Georgetown, Golden and Central ; 
and the miracle-working medicinal waters of Colorado, Idaho and 
Manitou Springs, iron, sulphur, soda, magnesia, every variety of 
chalybeates, hot, cold and tepid, duplicating all the far-famed 
waters of Bath and Ems and Baden-Baden abroad, and those of 
Saratoga, Blue Lick and the various sulphur springs at home. 
The air is dry, pure and invigorating. No dew falls, no dampness 
or miasma is ever known. Asthma finds immediate and per- 
manent relief, catarrh and hay-fever disappear at once and for- 
ever, even the oldest chronic cases being promptly benefited. 
Consumption in all its earlier stages may be cured by this balmy, 
healing air, and all the grand and glorious surroundings charm the 
spirit, while the body is being restored to health. There is no 
reason why this region should not become the world's greatest 
sanitarium and most fashionable resort. It has every advantage 
anil the beauty of all the other noted health and pleasure resorts 
combined, and all on a far grander scale. 
Denver has completed this year (1882), at a cost of $100,000, 



56 The Heart of the Continent. 

a grand international mining exposition building, in which was 
held, August 1st to September 30th, one of the most extensive 
and interesting exhibitions of the kind that ever took place in the 
annals of mines and mining. Every part of the United States, 
Mexico, the Central American States, South America's principal 
mining provinces and Australia were represented 




Massacre Canon, Nebraska. 



V. 

The Heart of the Continent. 



Such is a trip over the great Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 
railroad, from the Lakes to the Rockies, the vast resources 
that lie along its mighty line, and the wonders that surround its 
terminal points. It would take volumes to enumerate and de- 
scribe in detail all its features and attractions, even to call the 
roll of the cities it brings close together in time, if not in distance. 

Returning eastward from Denver it has a line running the 
whole length of the fertile Republican valley, by way of Red 
Cloud, Atchison and Kansas City, to St. Louis. This last city, 
the metropolis of Missouri and of the Mississippi valley, is the 
terminus of two grand divisions of the Chicago, Burlington & 
Quincy road. St. Louis was first settled in 1763, by adventurous 
French traders. Twenty-five miles below the junction of the great 
Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and one hundred and eighty-seven 
miles above the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi, this great 
city has a royal position for commercial importance. It virtually 
commands over 10, 000 miles of navigation on the mightiest rivers of 
the globe. The vast system of railways, which centers here, reaches 
out its iron arms to every region of the continent. The trade of Mis- 
souri, Texas, Arkansas and Indian territory, and of a large portion 
of Louisiana, Mississippi, western Tennessee and Kentucky, Kansas 
and New Mexico should naturally come to St. Louis. The city 
has a population of about 400,000, handsome public and private 
buildings, beautiful parks and gardens, some of which are de- 
servedly famed throughout the country, stately and elegant 
churches, many of the finest schools, of all grades, in the United 
States, a university that is perhaps not excelled by any in Amer- 
ica, extensive libraries, academies of art and design, newspapers 
that are scarcely surpassed in the world, and all the institutions 
and characteristics of a great natural metropolis, the fifth city of 
the republic. It is famed for its solid wealth, the substantial 
character of its business men, and the culture, refinement and 



58 The Heart of the Continent. 

hospitality of its society. Its commerce is daily increasing in 
volume and extent, magnificent buildings are going up in every 
part of its bounds, a rush of improvement is visible everywhere, 
and every indication presages a glorious future, commercial, 
financial, political and social, for the imperial city of the grand- 
est valley on the globe. 

Another of the eastern termini of the Chicago, Burlington & 
Quincy railroad is Peoria, a city itself worthy of many pages of 
description. Situated on the site of La Salle's ancient fort of 
" Crevecceur, " or Broken Heart, there is no broken heartedness 
about it or its citizens. It is one of the wealthiest and most 
prosperous cities of 40,000 people on the continent. It has eleven 
lines of railroad, its manufacturing and mercantile business last 
year aggregated $481,043,572, an increase of $86,286,552 over the 
preceding year. Its distilleries alone paid, during the year, 
$12,453,872 of internal revenue, more than is paid by any other 
revenue district in the United States. The city last year handled 
over 28,000,000 bushels of grain, its weekly clearings averaged 
over $1,000,000, it is beautifully built, growing rapidly and 
prospering beyond all description. 

Another city on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy trans-con- 
tinental-heart line is Des Moines, the beautiful capital of Iowa, 
risen from a hundred and twenty-seven inhabitants in 1846, to 
27,000 in 1882. Seven railways center in the city and two others 
are being built. The surrounding country is of unsurpassed 
fertility, and coal and timber abound. The manufactures of the 
city last year amounted to $12,738,781, its wholesale trade to 
$20,681,781, its grain and produce trade to $2,770,250, its coal 
trade to $1,175,750, and the improvements made during the year 
reached a grand total of $3,529,979. With a wide-awake, intelli- 
gent, enterprising population, and with an infinitude of natural 
advantages and resources, Des Moines is destined to play no un- 
important part in the grand drama of northwestern progress. 

Call the roll of great western cities, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas 
City, Peoria, Burlington, Quincj^, St. Joseph, Rock Island, Keo- 
kuk, Davenport, Des Moines, Atchison, Council Bluffs, Omaha, Lin- 
coln and Denver. All here, and all on the lines of the Briareus- 
handed, hundred-armed Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad. 



The Heart of the Continent. 59 

Ask for all the richest regions in the six grandest States of the 
American Great West ; and they all respond : Here, along the 
lines of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. Inquire for the 




' ■■;■"■'■ ■■.■:ri„> '.■'•! ■: ■ ■•■■ '''• ■ - -^Ifc. V".?%»- 

Platte Canon, Colorado. 

most glorious health and pleasure resorts upon the globe; and the 
answer is : In Colorado at the western end of the Chicago, 
Burlington & Quincy. To the traveler on business or for 



60 The Heart of the Continent. 

pleasure, going from the east to the west, it is the only through 
line. To the journeyer from the great lakesides to the Rocky 
Mountains, it is the only line, direct, owning its road clear 
through, and running its own cars. From Chicago to Denver, it 
is the first and only through line, and by many miles shorter than 
any of the broken and disjointed competing routes. To the grand 
scenery and health-giving air and medicated waters of the Rocky 
Mountain Wonderland, it is the only direct route under one 
management. To the eastern seeker for a home and a bonanza 
fortune, it affords the shortest, quickest, cheapest and best 
route to the broad valleys and prairies, the free pastures and 
grain-fields, and the daily developing mines of the marvelous Far 
West. To the eastern and southern summer tourist and refugee 
from torrid heats and lowland miasmas, it presents the most 
direct and luxuriously appointed highway to all the glorious 
loitering-places of the American Alps, where snow-capped peaks 
are ever in sight, where every breath is full of vigor ; where the 
eye and heart may feast on all that is most sublime and magnifi- 
cent in mountain, valley, lake, river, cataract, crag and canon ; 
and where Nature, from her strange, hidden laboratories, pours 
forth her wondrous healing floods that need no angel's pinion to 
stir them, as did Bethesda's pool of old, to give them potency for 
the relief of human woes. To the Colorado cattle shipper, it 
offers by far the most direct and convenient line to the great 
markets of the world. To everybody and anybody, bound from 
anywhere to anywhere else, to trans-continental tourists, as well 
as to local shippers and journeyers, the Chicago, Burlington & 
Quincy railroad offers every inducement and accommodation. 
It is the business man's route between the east and west. It is 
the artist's and tourist's route to all that is most gorgeous in 
scenery on the continent. It is the homeseeker's route to millions 
on millions of acres of free farming and grazing lands. It is the 
stock-raiser's route to cattle ranges and sheep pastures that cost 
nothing and are only fenced by the horizon. It is the fortune- 
hunter's route to all the bonanza mines, present and to come. It 
is the invalid's route to the world's most glorious sanitarium. 

The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Company, one of the 
wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world, with a 



The Heart of the Continent. 61 

capital stock that runs far up into the tens of millions, and man- 
aged by able, progressive, liberal men who stand in the front rank 
of their profession, can and does offer every possible inducement 
and convenience to the journeying public, no matter where that 
public journeys from or journeys to. Owning and controlling 
over 4,000 miles of splendid track, much of it double and nearly all 
of it laid with the finest steel rails, its managers have equipped it 
with lavish disregard of costs, but the greatest care for the com- 
fort and convenience of their patrons. Magnificent iron bridges 
span all the rivers on its route, and palatial parlor, stateroom, 
sleeping and dining cars fly along its smooth, stone-ballasted track 
at a high rate of speed without a jolt or a discomfort — sumptuous 
hotels on wheels, where one can eat, drink, read or sleep at 
pleasure, while he skims like a bird through glorious panoramas 
of city and country, orchards and wildwoods, mountain, prairie, 
lake, valley and majestic river. 

The cars run on all the lines of this model company are really 
marvels of ingenuity, beauty and elegance, including all the im- 
provements of the age. Its stateroom and sleeping cars are 
massive in build, elegantly decorated with carving and inlaying of 
various colored woods, gilding and painting, and costly mirrors 
and curtains, and furnished with luxurious cushions, marble 
wash-basins and snowy towels. The beds are as clean and com- 
fortable as those of the finest city hotels, and the weary traveler 
easily and delightfully dreams over two hundred and fifty miles of 
space. The dining-room cars, which this road was one of the 
first in the world to introduce, are each furnished with tables 
enough to accommodate thirty guests at a time. The table- 
cloths and napkins are of damask, fine as silk and white as snow, 
the silver and glassware is heavy and fine, the waiters well-trained 
and attentive, and the bill-of-fare as sumptuous as any journeying 
epicure could ask. It embraces soups, fish, game, meats, vegeta- 
bles, fragrant coffee and tea, rich cream and milk, fruits, found 
at first-class hotels. All this catalogue of dainties to be enjoyed 
for seventy -five cents. No scalding of your mouth in the rush 
and hurry of a twenty-minute halt at a wayside tavern. All calm, 
leisurely enjoyment of an elegant meal in the highest style of 
culinary art, with thirty or forty miles of panoramic landscape 



62 



The Heart of the Continent. 



thrown in through the car window, as an aesthetic relish and 
appetizer. Softly cushioned reclining-chair cars are furnished, 




The Gate to the Garden of the Gods, Colorado. 

without extra charge, on many of the divisions. They are pro- 
vided with wash-room, towels and all other toilet conveniences, 
and each one is in charge of a trusty porter, just as the sleeping- 
cars arc. 
Let the traveler or the shipper come whence he may or go 



The Heart of the Continent. 63 

whither he may, in all the great Heart of the Continent, from east 
to west or west to east, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad 
offers him every advantage and facility. It furnishes him a road 
which passes through scores of the most important cities, and 
thousands of miles of the richest lands and most enchanting scenes, 
in the West, and on which the possibility of fatal accidents is re- 
duced to the minimum. It furnishes the fastest rate of speed to be 
attained on any western line, attentive employes, and swift and 
sure connections for every important point or region on the con- 
tinent, and its fares and tariffs are always as low as the lowest. 

For the shipment of freight to or from the West, it offers choice 
of two through lines, magnificently equipped with freight and 
stock cars that have every modern improvement and convenience, 
including refrigerators for fruit, meats and other perishable 
articles, and comfortable stall cars for fine grades of live-stock. 
Its engines are as fine as any made or used in the world, and it has 
all the necessary facilities to make the "Burlington Route " forever 
the favorite medium of trade and travel between the Great Lakes 
and the Rocky Mountains, the grand main artery through ' ' The 
Heart of the Continent." 



In the preceding pages we have endeavored to describe in a 
general way the inducements offered in the six great States, and 
the appended map will show how to reach the most important 
towns and cities therein. Many other questions may arise which 
we have been unable to cover, but we shall be only too happy to 
give any additional information that may be desired as to routes, 
rates, time of trains, lands for sale, guide books for tourists, &c, 
upon application either in person or by letter to the Passenger 
Department, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. , Chicago, 111. 



This Line offers Superior Facilities 




And Inducements to all Classes of Travellers. 







• # * 





*■ 



• ♦*'** 











■ © 




^ 
«£ 




^9 







■v^. *? 






W : ^\ 'Jw?*' <^\ '•SHv* ****** 



.0 «*. 



8 * -<v <r^ 









